A Study of the impact of the adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) on work productivity in the retail banking industry

Abstract

Automation is not a new phenomenon. The automation of activities have proven to be pivotal in productivity growth not only at the individual level, but at the business level and achieved the economies of scale. One of the emerging technologies that has had a significant impact in the financial services industry is the adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). IBS Intelligence (2019)’s report acknowledged that the RPA technology deploys “software robots to automate repetitive, rule-based, and high-volume tasks, has helped financial institutions in the phase of digital transformation”. This research attempts to study the impact of RPA adoption in the South Korean retail banking industry in relation to work productivity through a quantitative analysis. Specifically, the study takes the attributes from the IT innovation theories to observe the front office bank employees’ behavior with the adoption of a new technology like RPA is introduced. Data sources included analysis of financial reports of the major banks in South Korea and business journals. Then, data were collected from 62 front-office bank employees working at the two of the top five retail banks in South Korea with experiences of reassigning tasks to RPA bots.